


Looks (passed and shared)

by Prosodi



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:15:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prosodi/pseuds/Prosodi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Speirs recognizes the looks: most of them sort of wide eyed and startled, deer in the headlights. And there's a kind of pleasure in that - knowing that that most men rock back on their heels and dig in a little when he does get to yelling. Lipton doesn't look away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looks (passed and shared)

Speirs recognizes the looks: most of them sort of wide eyed and startled, deer in the headlights. And there's a kind of pleasure in that - knowing that that most men rock back on their heels and dig in a little when he does get to yelling. Mostly, it is one of two things: people staring at him, or people not looking at all - head bowed, stare at the dirt. Don't look, don't look, don't look. Speirs turns his head and sometimes catches some bare knuckled private looking his way. He makes a point of staring back - the private goes sharp and stiff, and then hurries back to whatever he's supposed to be doing. Speirs' mouth quirks. Good.

Later, where it is marginally warm, he and Lipton stand at the end of the mangled piano in what was once a nice house but is now just war refuse. Speirs rests on his elbows and paws through the things from the rear like he's trying to root out the things that are worthwhile. Lipton has his scarf pulled up near his chin.

"What garbage," Speirs says plainly. He glances sideways and catches Lipton looking at him. He doesn't look away, scratches his eyebrow with the back of his thumb. His mouth quirks gently. Speirs looks back to the new maps, new orders. He meticulously reads every line.

But it's not like he’s cowtowing. It's just sensible, having come from Dog Company not too terribly long ago, not having spent the war with the men of Easy, to take note of the things Lipton offers. Advice on men, patrols, matching names to faces. Speirs doesn't have to be told anything twice - he adapts quickly. But in Hageunau, as in Foy, he knows the men of Easy largely by the tactical opportunities they provide. Lipton knows them with a familial intimacy. It's the sort of intelligence that only a goddamn idiot doesn't pay attention to. So Speirs reads head quirks and looks and doesn't give a damn who doubts his leadership potential when he makes a point of asking Lipton things. The man's a good soldier, knows the men, and that's important. It has nothing to do with standing in the same room as him, or with the way that Lipton pauses whenever he asks, deliberates purposefully and then hesitates for another moment out of what Speirs can only identify as a sense of decorum, though he likes to think it’s Lipton smuggling down the pleasure of being asked his opinion since every time it happens he seems genuinely surprised by it.

Which is maybe why Speirs continues to ask them - finds himself hunting him Lipton at strange hours to talk about some name or piece of information. He doesn't think anything of it, though he keeps coming around. He does nothing different - appears at random intervals with the kind of ease and silence that startles other men, but that Lipton seems to accept as commonplace. Once, Speirs lets himself through the open doorway into the room that Lipton is using and finds that he's asleep. He pauses there, feels strangely unsettled. He weight is all in his toes for a moment. He rocks back. The floorboards creak. Lipton jerks and rises sharply from the sagging mattress, his carbine lodged under his arm in a way that Speirs unconsciously approves of. Good. Lipton breathes out, probably wants to rub his face but instead just squints and starts to fumble to attention.

"Go back to sleep," Speirs cuts him off.

Lipton aborts a hazy, instinctual salute and lets his hand rest on the top of the weapon's stock. He says, carefully, "I'd rather not, sir."

"Don't tell me you have bad dreams, Lip?"

"No sir," he says. "Nothing like that."

If he feels guilty about waking him up, Speirs forgets it. He goes to sit on the edge of the bed, saying, "Good, because I wanted to ask--" and Lipton answers all his questions while his legs are still under a blanket and his hand is still on his weapon, as if he's forgotten both.

The days are above freezing, though it is still bitterly cold at night. The streets are all muddy. German artillery comes in at rare intervals, though it is hardly aggressive. Not much is. At night, when it’s cold and wet, he makes his way near the river to where the machine gunners lay in wait for any sign of the enemy on the far bank. Heffron and a replacement lay behind a low stone wall in a muddy garden, eyes sharp. The replacement makes a low noise as he looms out of the darkness.

"Anything?" Speirs asks. He is standing up straight and has his weapon at his shoulder.

"No sour kraut here, no sir."

Speirs gives Heffron a look, then nods. "As you were," then goes on his way. By the time he is done, his hands are cold. He lengthens his stride marginally, and finds some gut deep urge satisfied when he finds Lipton making coffee in a banged up pot over a tiny fire in the fireplace, the smoke rising in the chimney nowhere near noticeable enough at night for the Germans to zero in on.

Lipton pours him a cup, then one for himself. They remain squatting on the hearth near the small collection of sparks, burning twigs and leaves and the ashy remains of what might have once been a chair leg.

Speirs turns the cup in his hands and sips it from every angle until the entire lip of the cup is warm from his mouth, the thick coffee or both. He has never been one the mind the cold, though he finds he likes this better.

Lipton divides what is left in the pot between them after the first cup goes. He steadies Speris' cup with his hand, and their fingers touch. He doesn't pull away, just pours the coffee. Speirs can feel the small hairs at the back of his neck rise and he stares hard at the stream of black coffee as Lipton pours, grit and grain swirling at the surface. Lipton's fingertips are cold.

The coffee pot is empty. Lipton shakes it to make sure. Speirs glances sideways, catches his eye and stares. "Alright?" Lipton asks.

"I'm just fine." And he is. Whatever the men of the 506 and beyond want to believe, he isn't some kind of super human, impervious to the cold and to hurt. Early days in France, Speirs tore up his hand on the raw edge of a mortar fragment, swore up and down and grit his teeth. In Bastogne, his legs ached. His feet sometimes still hurt. But mostly, he adapts. Lipton asks if he's alright, and he is. It isn't a lie. More than one, maybe.

There is a fierce, visceral pleasure in the tilt of Lipton's mouth and the angle of his arm as he releases the cup and puts the coffee pot aside. He doesn't meet Speirs' eye again, though there is an ease to it. It's not an aversion, so much as it is companionable - Lipton studies the little fire and shakes his head, sips the murk out of his cup and says, "Good to hear it sir," low and tired and the sound makes Speirs' mouth water.

There is something special to it, something worthwhile in the way Lipton talks to him and the open quality of his face when he looks his way. Speirs doesn't have to consider that he might be wrong; he knows - not just because Lipton is well liked and well respected by seemingly the entire company, but because while Speirs rarely takes account of the state of his own skin, being around Lipton makes him suddenly keenly aware of it. Of the state of his stomach and the smell of the air, the points where he makes contact with the ground, the precise distance between his steps. Around him, Speirs feels hungry all the time. It is a singular sort of hyper awareness that he can't shake, and it is particular to Carwood Lipton. Speirs considers that meaningful, and blames Lipton for it. No one else in Easy or Dog or Fox or in the States or in England makes him so terribly aware of his own body.

Lipton's battlefield commission comes in. Easy leaves Haguenau behind. Soon, Lipton will be transferred away, but for now Easy is kept on the move: crawling toward Germany as the weather warms and spring comes warm and unbearably bright. The time to make Lipton's transfer official never seems to arise; perhaps it is some kind of repayment for all the poor efforts of the home office in Bastogne and elsewhere. Easy may get its winter kit late, but it gets to keep Lipton for longer. God bless the bureaucracy.

There are no more questions to ask. Speirs loots his way through Bertchesgarden with single minded ferocity.

There is silver and dishes and wristwatches and jewelry. He boxes it up and sends it home. There are no more Germans to kill. A few of the boys wheel around in beautiful cars. Speirs flags them down, drives recklessly around with the top folded down and six men sliding around in the back seat, howling laughter and clinging to the sides and each other. Someone spills wine all over the back seat and floor. It leaves a horrible dark red stain all over the upholstery. Lipton notices it immediately when he later gets in the car. Speirs has invited him to go come along on what he deems official business -- busy work, he explains -- which unless they find their way to the Pacific, Lipton will have to soon become accustomed to. Nominally, they are off to check the efficiency of the men working the guard posts. Technically, the excursion is for the indolent joy of driving too fast on country roads.

Speirs catches him eying the stain as he closes the door. "Talbert's wine," Speirs explains.

Lipton grins, ducks his head, looks at him sideways and then ahead as Speirs presses the gas and the car rolls forward, slithering between knots of men in uniform. "And here I thought you'd maybe shot a few Germans in the back seat." He says it very quietly, reserved, not looking at Speirs.

Speirs stares at him sideways, then laughs. Lipton's mouth twitches. By the time they are on the road winding their way through the densely wooded foothills of the Alps, Lipton is smiling outright and has his elbow edged over the door, holding on to the frame so as not to be jostled too much by the way the low slung car bounces on the road.

They run through checkpoints, roaring down the road. On the way back, they will worry about hails and passwords, but as they wind down from Berteschgarden there is no interruption until the mountains yawn open and the sides of the road mellow into watercolor grass, yellow and green. Speirs pulls over to light a cigarette. Lipton rarely smokes now that it's warm, but after a few puffs Speirs offers it to him anyway. He accepts, clearing his throat after every drag. It is golden and warm; winter and everything else is very far away and things like furlough abroad or months spent presenting arms and running the men through training exercises and useless drills that much closer. It comes with a wild sense of both the boredom of being stuck here and an unmitigated sense that, at least here, the war is over. The men of Easy drink too much and run their commandeered cars off the roads. Thoughts of survival make everyone reckless and Speirs, who has never thought much about what he will do when the war in Europe ends, takes everything until there is nothing left and then swears at anyone who looks at him crossways. Then goes driving and shares cigarettes with a man who is currently his lieutenant, but won't be for long.

They smoke the cigarette down until it there is nothing left to hold onto, bitter frugalness bred into them, and then Speirs gleefully ashes it on the dashboard. He should turn the car around, make the drive back up to where they're expected to be. Instead, heady on mountain air and glutted on boredom, Speirs sits quietly behind the wheel and stares down the road. His knee does not jiggle, though his thumb taps absently against the steering wheel. His skin itches on his bones and the front seat of the goddamn car feels unbearably long. He glances sideways and stiffens sharply when he finds Lipton looking at him. He asks the first question he can think of, which is "What did you say your wife's name was?"

Lipton's mouth goes crooked. "Jo Anne."

Speirs throws the car into first gear and releases the clutch. It jerks forward and the engine stalls. Lipton grasps at the dashboard, not expecting the lurch forward. It is a tactical move, a calculated maneuver. By the time he recovers, Speirs has him cornered on the passenger side of the car; they are not quite touching, but are close enough to it.

The lines of Lipton's body go taut. He isn't looking at Speirs, instead is staring at his hand or somewhere down the road or anywhere but here. Speirs breathes slowly, hovers, and studies the line of his chin stubbornly. He wants to strangle something, to swear at something. He makes plans to go back to Bertchesgarden and tear up floorboards looking for precious things that don't belong to him.

Then Lipton tips his head faintly and looks at him - sideways at first, the turns to study him outright. Rigid, Speirs stares back at him. Lipton doesn't flinch, glance away, doesn't stare. Just looks. Speirs stares, then blinks, then kisses him on the mouth while his hand catches Lipton's collar and holds him there.

His mouth is, as expected, warm - though in spring that hardly seems remarkable. What Speirs doesn't account for is the way that Lipton sways first away from him, breaks the contact, then apparently reconsiders: surges against him and grasps at his knee. Speirs finds himself grinning sharply against the taste of him, studying what his skin looks like so close. He huffs and laughs and then makes a low tangled noise of reckless pleasure as he undoes every button he can find. Lipton's hand is on his thigh, surprisingly demanding. Speirs kisses him carefully, mouth gentle until he reaches places where no one will see. And Lipton fumbles at the door of the car, at the dashboard which is harder to reach. His legs fall at odd angles; there is something deeply satisfying about the way he pulls on the sleeve of Speirs' jacket, at the hard sound of his breathing which is horribly loud.

It is careful until it is not: degenerating suddenly into grasping and shoving and Lipton's mouth hot against his jaw. Speirs doesn't know how long they are stalled, parked halfway in what can only be described as a ditch, but knows that when they finish they are both flushed and sweating, that Lipton's face is very red and that his own mouth feels raw. Speirs moves to straighten Lipton's clothes, studying him in the process. Lipton, who lets him do it, breathes out something like laughter as he lifts his hips and shoulders and Speirs fastens his buttons. He is breathes hard, can't stop smiling. Speirs covers his mouth his hand, soft. Gentle. "Goddamnit Lieutenant, smile like that and you'll ruin my reputation."

"Yes sir," Lipton says, hardly muffled. He doesn't stop though; Speirs can feel that easy smile settle under the palm of his hand, chapped lips and an edge of teeth.


End file.
